


Use your words

by GufettoGrigio



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, Developing Relationship, Feelings Realization, M/M, That 1994 press conference where Michael laughed at Mika's language skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-25 14:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20027458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GufettoGrigio/pseuds/GufettoGrigio
Summary: Five times it was Michael who forgot English (and one time he learned Finnish)





	Use your words

**Author's Note:**

> Floating about the internet somewhere, there's an amazing video of a 1994 press conference in which a young Mika messes up his English (I think he answers in Finnish to an English question) and Michael bursts out laughing at him. Mika turns around and tells him "Don't laugh!" (which could have easily been an adorable "Shut up!") and then, because it's Mika, he goes on answering in Finnish with Michael giggling. Well, that's where this bunny came from. Enjoy?

**1994**

He hadn’t meant to make Mika feel self-conscious. The laugh had just…come out. It’s something that happens after a good race, Michael's emotions slipping past his control and rising up to the surface, like a thousand soap bubbles ready to burst. And this has been a good race and Michael _ is _ happy - he hadn’t laughed because he wanted to mock, he laughed in pure delight because it was genuinely funny, Mika jumbling up his English because he too was jittery, still coming down from the high. It was cute.

He thinks Mika knows it, that he didn’t mean to mock. The other driver did not look mad and Michael still got a teasing back, even if in Finnish. So, mad? No, but he hadn’t looked quite right either.

That’s why Michael decides to sneak into the McLaren garage after the post-race chaos. It doesn't take much effort, despite his bright blue Benetton overalls; at the mention of Mika's name the mechanics just wave him in the general direction of the drivers’ rooms. 

Mika himself seems surprised to see him, but then again it's Mika and sometimes it's hard to tell with him. He is still in his overalls, his face almost a matching shade of red from the heat and his blond hair sticking up at odd angles. He looks beautiful - Michael thinks. Mika always looks beautiful but it’s in moments like this, just off the track, when his beauty takes on a rough, sweat-and-grime kind of edge, that Michael finds his willpower and sanity truly threatened.

"I didn't mean to laugh" - Michael admits before he gets any more sidetracked.

For a moment, Mika looks like he doesn't quite get it then it dawns on him. "Oh. I know." 

He does not seem too bothered, Michael thinks, but again _ Mika _.

"I didn't mean to be rude." Michael presses on. He needs to be sure the Finn is not just trying to swipe it under the carpet only to never speak to Michael again...or worse bring the grudge all the way to the track.

"Yes. I know." Mika tells him again and this time his lips quirk a bit, half-way between a smile and a frown. Michael has judged it correctly then: no offence but he had been too close to crossing a line.

"Let me make it up to you then…" Michael starts to say, just as Mika decides that's also the right moment to drop the conversation entirely and start stripping out of his overalls. 

"I mean, we could…" 

Mika is now down to his pants and taking his shirt off too.

"Wir könnten essen...gehen...?" (1)

The words get stuck in his throat. Mika stops, takes one look at him and laughs.

(1) Do you want to get something to eat?

**1995**

Hospitals are never the best place for someone to be at. Maybe for births, but even then it's a messy affair and...and who is he kidding? Mika can't even speak and Michael is not sure he should be here.

Pale and half naked in his hospital gown, Mika looks broken. A puppet with its strings all cut. Even the Flying Finn cannot fly away from here – Michael bitterly realizes. The only way is through and it's entirely possible there's no light at the end of this tunnel.

Feeling his body suddenly too heavy, he sits down. He blinks, drags it out, welcoming the fleeting darkness. The room is too bright, all white and shades of light green. 

He should probably talk, Michael thinks, opening his eyes again. He should break the silence before it goes from an off beat moment to a choking void. The truth is, he does not know what to say.

What _ does _ one say in these situations? _ I am sorry? _What's the point in apologising for something no one had control over. _ How are you? _ Yeah, no. He can damn well see for himself how Mika is and it's not good. Maybe he should talk, just random talk, but unless he finds the words for the knot of feelings sitting like a weight at the bottom of his stomach, all that comes up to Michael's mind are driving related things - paddock gossip and whatnot. Michael is not sure he should even utter the word _car _around Mika right now.

For his part, the Finn just watches him, his bright blue eyes glazed over with painkillers but definitely _ there _. Michael is ultimately drawn to them, like so many times before, and that's when he notices it. There's something wrong with Mika's eyes. 

Michael has been told that Mika can't move part of his face, including his eyelids, but that's not quite what he means with _ wrong _ . It’s something deeper, not something that is missing but something that does not belong there, something that Michael has seen once before, in a pair of very different eyes, dark eyes, eyes that had told him... _ I am going to die. _

_ I am going to die. _

"Du wirst nicht!" - Michael screams horrified - "Du hast nicht und du wirst nicht!"(2)

It comes out wrong, Michael knows it does because Mika looks at him like he can't quite understand. Like Michael's words are a foreign language for him. Maybe they are, Michael is not sure he even spoke English. It doesn’t matter. Who wouldn't think "I am going to die" when they are already on a hospital bed with their throat slit open and in so much pain they are counting their time in morphine doses? 

Michael looks down. The silence has turned now, an ugly thing that chokes Michael up. Those feelings that usually flutter around Michael's stomach whenever he is around Mika have become frozen, clotted together with overwhelming dread. What is he going to do, if Mika is right? How is he supposed to cope with losing him and Ayrton in the space of a year? 

"Mika." - he pleads, he orders - " You are going to come back. You are. And I can..I can be here. I can stay. I can come back?" It's a heavy offer to make, when Mika’s blue eyes have summoned flashes of Ayrton’s, of his blood, of what was left of him when Michael saw him after...after. And now it's Mika. _ Mika _, who is looking like... 

Mika shakes his head, the movement digging lines of pain over his features. There is something soft in his eyes this time, a familiar look that makes something catch sweetly in Michael's chest. It should have no place here, this lone spark of that brilliance that lights up Mika when he steps on the podium. Yet here it is and Michael finds he can breath again, feeling selfishly glad that it isn't lost, that he can still spark it. Maybe, they are both one step closer to fine now.

"Ok. I'll call you then. When you get out. And you will do everything to get out. Promise."

He is pretty sure Mika can neither nod nor shake his head but Mika, cheeky bastard that he is, still has his ways and raises one of his pinky fingers instead.

Michael takes it.

(2) You are not! You have not and you are not!

**1997**

Michael fucked up. Well, no, he didn't. That is the problem. He won, that wasn't a fuck up, but he may have needed to kind of _ accidentally _ make Mika almost steer into a wall by slowing down when he definitely shouldn't have which, had it been anyone that's not Mika with Mika's car control, it was admittedly quite dangerous. 

At parc ferme, Mika had hopped out of the car, took one look at him, guessed correctly he had done it on purpose and refused to speak to him for the rest of the day - podium and press conference included.

The Finn has a point, of course, and Michael knows it. He won't admit it and he won't apologise, a race is a race after all, but he respects Mika's anger and his silence so he leaves him be. 

Except that now is the morning after, Michael is down for breakfast at their hotel's buffet, and the storm raging over Mika's head has definitely not lifted. DC doesn't even _ try _ to be discreet when he nudges his teammate to warn him of Michael's arrival. Mika ignores him. Michael considers for a long moment whether he should give it more time but he is not exactly the kind of person who can sit on a problem hands in hands. So, he goes over instead, reaching out with a hand for Mika’s shoulder.

"_Don't _." - Mika stops him, voice flat - "Don't touch me, don't talk to me...just don't exist in my general vicinity for the next two weeks."

"But" - Michael starts - "we have a race on Sunday"

Mika sets down his coffee, morosely looking at the cup as if it was full of poison. 

"Fine. Until Saturday then." 

No, Michael got it all wrong. The poison is all in Mika's voice.

"Qualifier on Friday." DC reminds his teammate, whether to placate him or make it worse, Michael is not sure. 

This time Mika shrugs, looking straight at Michael. "Then someone better watch their time."

Before Michael can open his mouth again and likely dig himself into an even deeper hole, Eddie decides that he does like his teammate after all and that clearly Michael's preservation instincts need some help if they have not kicked in yet. Either that or there's some kind of British SOS code been exchanged between him and DC.

Michael finds himself being dragged away.

They sits at a table outside, Eddie shoving orange juice and a croissant in his direction.

"You do know one of these days Mika will snap, forget he is scared of crashing, and drive you straight off the road, right? - the Irishman asks - "DC might get there even sooner, mate."

"That’s not like Mika. I don’t know what he is going to do, though." - Michael tells him, a thought he can’t quite place dragging his eyes back to the inside of the restaurant, - “Ich weiß nicht, was er von _ mir _ will. Zuletzt starten?”(3)

"What?" - Eddie laughs - " Mike, was that even English?"

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Michael doesn't care either way because all at once he's been struck like a lightning bolt by the knowledge that he indeed better fix it by Friday. Because if starting last is what it does take to placate Mika's anger, there's an uncomfortably large part of him actually contemplating swerving into a gravel trap.

(3) Though, I don't know what he wants _me_ to do! Start last?

**1999**

The World Championship press conference can be a crowded affair when there's four drivers piled behind the table, Michael knows it first hand. This time they are lucky: it's only the three of them with Mika happily living up to the imagery of the Flying Finn, a blond angel in white bracketed by the scarlet of the Ferrari suits.

Last year, Michael had been - secretly, privately and silently - almost as upset at not winning as he had been over having to retire that last race, missing out on standing next to Mika on the podium. For all that this year has not been great for him either, Michael will take his comfort in the small things.

Next to him Mika is smiling and there's no wiping the grin off his face. Michael has been told multiple times (by a very amused Eddie) that he should "refrain from looking at Mika like he hung the stars" or at least tone it down during press conferences because "it's cute, Mike, really but eugh, man...I don't need the bedroom eyes all over the news while I am trying to have breakfast." Michael is not sure how he is supposed to tone it down now, with Mika so close and so happy he is basically radiating light. 

He settles for looking at the other out of the corner of his eye, when it looks like the cameras do not care for anything further than the new World Champion. What Michael hadn't considered is how sneaky a happy Mika can be, especially after he has had his well deserved share of champagne.

The microphone stands hide Mika's movements almost completely from the rest of the world. Michael himself does not notice anything until there are warm fingers on top of his.

Like nothing is happening, Mika continues to smile at the journalists, seemingly concentrated on whatever it is that Eddie is saying. Michael himself has no idea; his whole world has narrowed down at once to the warmth of Mika's fingers on his. This is reckless madness, Michael thinks, but he loves Mika's madness, his recklessness always feeling like a breath of fresh air against the stuffy rules of decorum and PR. It makes Michael wants to chase the risk, flip his hand around, lock their fingers together, cameras be damned. 

"Mika, today you won the Championship basically at the start of the race. Talk us through it? "

"Well, start is usually hard here in Suzuka..." - Mika answers, instinctively reaching up to fiddle with his hat in an effort to calm his nerves. His hand moves away but Michael has only a split second to mourn the contact because Mika just shifts again and curls only his pinky finger around Michael's instead.

"Michael, congratulations. You have helped secure Ferrari’s first Constructor Championship since 1993. In this race, however..." - a journalist begins but Michael barely hears him, all his rational thoughts having screeched to a halt as a million fluttery _ things _ go crazy in his chest.

"Ich denke schon ... ich meine" - Michael stutters before he can catch himself. (4)

He blushes as he looks down, trying to hide behind a cough. He is 30, for fuck's sake, not five. They have fucked more times than he can count, in every place he can think of, from cars to hotel rooms to hallways and almost everything that's in the middle. He shouldn't be getting this worked up over such a small touch. But it's _ Mika_. It's Mika and Michael always forgets himself with him, finds parts of himself he didn't know existed. This is Mika's promise kept. He's there, he's happy, radiant and so breathtakingly beautiful. How is he supposed to cope?

Michael clears his throat and goes back to answering. Mika beams happily and doesn't move his hand. Michael doesn't either. Eddie tries to hide his laughter behind his orange juice and fails miserably.

(4) I think that...I mean...

**2000**

Mika is...Michael is not sure what Mika is. He is upset with Michael, this much the German knows. There was a lot of Finnish involved in him getting told off for "fucking pushing me in the grass at 300 kmh". Still, Mika won. So he can't be all that upset. Not with that smug grin on his face. He has a damn good reason for it too.

Michael might not know what Mika is feeling, but he knows what he himself is and that is awe. Awe of that pass. Of the guts it takes to just go for Eau Rouge flat out on dry tires after the rain while knowing first hand what hitting the barriers feels like. 

That's what Michael has always admired about Mika - the fact the man will just step up the chase, shrug off any side steps the German comes up with and leave Michael in the dust. No, Michael won't admit any of this aloud but also no, he is not going to tone anything down, not this time. He doesn't think he can.

"I knew there was no point trying to follow him and overtake him at the end of the straight because obviously he is not going to give me a room. Is that correct?"- Mika explains to the press, turning at the end to grin at him.

"Yep. I’ll always make your life difficult." - Michael quips back. He is not sure how much of what he feels is showing on his face but there's quite the chance his smile is a mirror of Mika's beaming one. Mika does knows him too well.

"So I overtook the backmarker at the same time I overtook the Michael." Mika finishes with a grin. "It was a great overtaking maneuver. I loved it. I am not sure if the Michael did."

_ Ich liebe _dich, Michael's brain helpfully answers and all the rest of Michael's thoughts scatter around like a spray of gravel under his wheels.

_Ich liebe...Ich liebe_...Oh. In a sudden rush, Michael starts pulling at the end of the thread he now finds in his grasp and the tangle of his feelings comes undone. Michael's mind scrambles back, flashing through memories of sharing tears and bottles of champagne, of hurried kisses behind stacks of tires and endless nights of heat in hotel rooms. He follows the line, watches it unravel in the frantic scrambling for an ice-pack for Mika's migraines, in the relief he felt waking up with a cast and the Finn asleep in a chair next to him. There's that week they spent in Mika's cabin in Finland and that summer afternoon of pushing each other in the lake back home in Switzerland.

Then Michael suddenly finds himself standing still, beginning and end both in his grasp. He is all the way back to one of his first F1 track tests, to a memory of Ayrton telling him off because Michael hadn't been paying attention to him. It had been raining and Mika's Lotus wouldn't start and the Finn had looked so done, so close to actually banging his pretty head against the damn car, that all Michael had been able to think about had been getting him out of his soaked overalls and somewhere warm, preferably his arms. That should have been the moment of realization because one does not just ignore Ayrton Senna but it's Mika. _It's Mika_, Michael had shrugged, just like he had done when the Finn just gritted his teeth, managed to start the car and got one of the best times of the day.

_It's Mika_, Michael has told himself since. _It's Mika_, like the rules of the the common universe don't apply to the Finn, like that is all Michael ever needed for things to make sense and maybe that's it, maybe he has always known, just never put words to it. And what does it say about him - Michael suddenly wonders - that he just almost drove the person he loves off the track? That he just potentially risked their life? What does it say about Mika, who is there beaming, still high on having handed Michael his karma?

_ Er liebt dich auch _ , Michael's brain informs him and off again those butterflies go, fluttering crazily in his stomach. And yes, Michael is an idiot because he should have known that too, even further back on an F3 track when Mika had all but thrown away Macau just to chase him. _Er liebt dich auch. Mika liebt dich. _(5)

"Michael.." - one of the journalists starts and Michael hurries to get a sip of his water before some of those scrambled German thoughts spills out instead.

(5) He loves you too. Mika loves you.

**2004**

Mika is not there anymore. Michael never quite forgets it but it's getting easier to push that fact out of his mind now that it's already been three seasons.

When Mika had announced his retirement Michael had been disappointed. He had known it was coming, Mika's fire flickering down more and more, but it had still been bittersweet to see him go. The end of an era in F1, the end of a chapter in Michael's book. Never the end of them. Or so Michael had thought.

When the knock comes, Michael almost jumps off the bed. It’s Mika. Mika in the white shirt from this morning, with his sleeves rolled up and the paddock pass still in his breast pocket. He is a sight for sore eyes – just like he was earlier by the track – and there’s only so much Michael can do not to kiss him right there in the hallway. God, how he had hoped the other would find some time and come.

“Come in” Michael says before he does something they would both regret. Mika does, locking the door behind himself.

"It's good to see you." - he says, a small smile on his face as his blue eyes take Michael in properly - "Congratulations on the race."

"Will you stay for the celebrations?"

It's an invitation, a joke, a genine question - Michael is not sure how he means it but the answer he expects is definitely not for Mika to just stand there on the door, smile gone, hesitant.

It throws Michael right off: Mika is never hesitant. It's the one thing that set him apart from the beginning, when it was Ayrton they were racing against and then when it was Michael who already had two championships and the upper hand. Mika never believed- never let himself believe- that they were better than him. He raced, he took his place at Michael's side and didn't let it go.

Oh, Michael thinks, stumbling back to sit on the bed. Maybe that's it: letting go. It can’t be that though, can it? Surely, it’s too out of the blue though, for Mika to want to break things off. Yes, they haven’t seen much of each other recently but Mika’s presence (or lack thereof) is always a dull pulsing at the core of Michael's chest, like the throbbing of a missing limb, there and not there. Michael cannot really imagine the same not being true for the Finn – he knows Mika, he does. Doesn't he?

Yet, when did they last actually spent time together? When is the last time they shared something that wasn’t an international phone call? Maybe, somewhere in that time Michael can't remember, that phantom feeling of loss turned to nothing, maybe the ache they had both struggled with at the beginning of Mika's retirement has died down, Mika's world healing in a way that doesn't include Michael anymore. Or maybe it’s all Mika. Mika who doesn’t believe that Michael still wants him, still wants this.

“Speak to me, Mika” – Michael asks and realizes he’ll plead if he has to. Too many questions, too many. They should have touched base before. Mika doesn’t sit down, standing stiff in front of Michael, always one to make it harder on himself if the alternative is backing down. Michael aches to shake him, hold him, kiss him, anything to snap them out of this. He fights himself, stops. He has learned better than to rush.

Finally, Mika looks at him.

"Do you remember" - he asks - "Do you remember what we said after Ayrton's funeral, about how Prost looked?"

Michael remembers. That day is a blur of pain in his memories but there are some things one doesn't forget. The horror on the face of a man realizing fully that his world has been ripped apart and he'll get no more late night calls, no more second chances, is one of the unforgettables. 

"That we wouldn't get there" - Michael whispers - "we wouldn't reach the point where we would be too scared or numb to step off the rollercoaster because we had burnt one too many bridges and there was no one to catch us. We wouldn't get to the point where one of us needed to be dead to realize we were always better together."

There hadn't been a _ together _ then, not in '94, but they must have known _ something _, to make a promise like that. They have kept it so far, as hard as that has been at times. Are they really going to fail now, after Mika already managed to step away from racing without regrets and Michael is starting to contemplate doing the same?

The silence falls, an open chasm between them but Michael knows he still can't break it. He can't push. He forces himself to wait once more, feeling the struggle all the way into his bones.

Slowly, Mika pulls something out of his back pocket, holding it out for Michael to take. His fingers are white and cold when Michael grabs the envelope from them. He opens it, digging out the papers inside. Mika seems all of a sudden interested in a spot of somewhere over Michael’s shoulder. It's plane tickets. Plane tickets to the race in Brazil in two weeks. Michael stares at them. Reads them over. They are in Suzuka now so...

"It's a 24 hours flight” - he says slowly. 

Mika nods. 

“Flying private. With a 3 days layover in New York” – Michael says again, because he needs to be sure, absolutely sure he is reading this right.

“Yes, I know. I booked them.”

In a heartbeat, the fluttery things that had been agonizing at the bottom of Michael's stomach spring back to life. Michael feels the knot uncoil in his chest, that unspoken fear that Mika would eventually move on, give up on Michael and his racing obsession giving way. Of course - he thinks now, relief melting his bones as he drops down on the bed - of course Mika doesn't give up. Mika is as selfish and as crazy as Michael is: if he wants something he'll get there and it has always been Michael he wanted. And Michael..Michael...

"Minä rakastan sinua" Michael tells him and laughs as Mika’s face goes white. (6)

“Michael..do you even..?” - the Finn stutters.

Michael shrugs, fighting back a smile. "What are you looking at me like that for? You are the one who came in here and all but said it!”

Mika gapes at him, at his words, at his tone. They both know he is not joking, not really - for a moment Michael fears Mika will either collapse or punch him and that's never a good mood for the Finn. So, Michael takes pity on him also because, at the back of his mind, he knows that it's him who messed up somewhere. While Mika came here with hope, he also came braced for a rejection and that’s not how someone should feel in a relationship, not how Michael wants Mika to feel. So, he holds out a hand, reaching for Mika’s wrist to pull him closer. Mika stumbles slightly, still dazed, but lets himself go anyway. His body is tense when Michael gets him in his arms, like he hasn't quite managed to shake a high voltage current out of his nerves yet. He feels just like he used to coming out from a race, the rush of adrenaline seeping out slowly leaving space for the shaky aftershock. It amazes Michael still, how deep Mika's emotions can run underneath the surface, how deeply Michael can shake his core. That the reverse is also true...well Michael may have finally found the words to express that.

"I know what I am saying." - Michael whispers into Mika's neck, his lips pressing a kiss just below his good ear.

“Me too.” 

(6) I love you.

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of historical accuracy, that's not how the 1999 Championship press conference went because Michael was pissed at DC and Mika was a ball of nerves but that's why we have fanfics, no?  
I am generally not sure how happy I am with this story so, if you've made it this far, please let me know what you think! And feel free to correct my GoogleTranslate German.  
You can find me as GufettoGrigio on tumblr.


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